Machine Learning: The Necessity of Order (is order in order ?)

In myriad of human-tailored activities, whether in the classroom or listening to a story, human learners receive selected pieces of information, presented in a chosen order and pace. This is what it takes to facilitate learning. Yet, when machine learners exhibited sequencing effects, showing that some data sampling, ordering and tempo are better than others, it almost came as a surprise. Seemingly simple questions had suddenly to be thought anew : what are good training data? How to select them? How to present them? Why is it that there are sequencing effects? How to measure them? Should we try to avoid them or take advantage of them? This chapter is intended to present ideas and directions of research that are currently studied in the machine learning field to answer these questions and others. As any other science, machine learning strives to develop models that stress fundamental aspects of the phenomenon under study. The basic concepts and models developed in machine learning are presented here, as well as some of the findings that may have significance and counterparts in related disciplines interested in learning and education